I sure appreciate all of the responses!

Francoise, we accomplish the same thing you suggest (the List Library
template) with a set of locally written web pages and perl scripts. People
fill in a web page, which emails the information to the listmgr account. I
export that to a file; then a script parses it for errors and integrates
the information with a "list header template". By editing that template, I
get my default configuration. Another script mails it off to listserv- my
best case personal time is less than 30 seconds to create a list. So time
isn't a problem.

But- there's "stuff" in the header that wouldn't need to be there if I
could specify site wide defaults, stuff that users see and decide to
change because, well, just because. In addition, if I didn't have to put
it in the header, then I could change the value for ALL lists by changing
the default. Example: review= defaults to private. In our environment,
that was reasonable 10 years ago, but not any more- review=owner is
preferable since it frustrates the "drive by" harvester who subscribes
just long enough to collect list member's addresses (and most list members
neither want nor need to find out who's subscribed). And in the future, I
might want some other value.

This also causes another problem because I can't tell if a value's there
because I (as manager) put it there or if the owner did so.  If the owner
put it there, I want to leave it as I presume the owner had a reason for
setting it.  If I put it there, I can safely change the value.  But again,
I don't know who did it. This isn't such an issue for newer lists, but may
be for older ones.

Bottom line: it seems to me it would be really useful to have this
feature. I have sufficient faith in Lsoft to believe they have thought
about this before, and therefore wonder why it isn't there.

Nelson Pardee

- Listserv List Manager
Listserv webpage: http://listserv.syr.edu
Web access to List Archives, Manuals, and List Management for Owners.